Monday, October 17, 2011

The Commodore has all that you would expect from a Patrick O'Brian novel. It has intrigue, love, botany, sailing, sea-battles, cannons, navel history, 19th century medicine and surgery, nautical jargon and everything else you would want to read about with regard to life in the early 1800's.

The wikipedia summary does a good job if you want a quick summary. But the pleasure only comes when you actually read the book.

No passages really stood out to me (and none have for the past few books) and therefore I've not made any dog-ears lately. To be quite honest, I am just simply enjoying reading the books.

There were a couple of parts that remain vivid in my mind ... the first was the details of the slave-trade. I can't even try to fathom what a slave-trade ship and life was like. What a horrendous practice!

The second part was the description of Stephen's Yellow Fever. I've had fevers and flus like that ... I could only feel for Dr. Maturin.

I'm am drawing near to the end of this series. I've enjoyed reading these novels tremendously and can hardly believe it will all be over soon. Maybe in 10 years or so, I'll revisit these books. My son has shown an interest in the books ... maybe I'll bequeath them to him so he can enjoy this wonderful series as well when he is old enough to enjoy them.